Mary Wollstonecraft rose to public prominence as one of the
leading contenders in the debate concerning the French Revolution
and its impact on British political and cultural life. Connected
with the most influential liberal intellectuals of the 1790s –
William Godwin, Thomas Holcroft, Tom Paine, Helen Maria Williams
and Mary Hays – she was the first to extend a revolutionary
ideology of man's natural right to determine his own destiny to
gender issues. Wollstonecraft's works fell into disrepute when
posthumous publication of her unconventional life occasioned a
barrage of anti-Jacobin abuse, which portrayed her feminist demands
as the source of moral corruption and her death in childbirth as a
providential punishment for her …

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are not a subscriber, please click here to read about membership. All our articles have been written recently by experts in their field, more than 95% of them university professors.

Articles on Wollstonecraft's works

Related Groups

5180Mary Wollstonecraft1Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

The Literary Encyclopedia is supplied without charge to higher education institutions in countries where per capita income is below the world average. If you are in a relatively wealthy country, reading The Literary Encyclopedia and recommending it to others helps us to afford these free supplies.